Crustacean Jang Jinyeong (2026)

A harrowing, offbeat novella about the ways young teenagers process trauma, The Crustacean follows Chichirim, a plain 13-year-old girl, an ordinary, misunderstood and lonely seventh-grader with a terrible secret. Her father is worse than useless, while her mother spends all day tattooing thick, ugly eyebrows on old women. Her parents forget her birthday, and her sister hates them so much that she wishes they were dead. Chichirim does bad things at school, yet no one cares. Until one day an older man picks her up by the roadside. He tells her she is pretty and tells her what to do. Beneath her hard outer shell, her softness is exploited and destroyed by the people she trusts and loves most. The Crustacean is an intricately crafted novella exploring memory, exploitation, and the lasting effects of adult abuse and betrayal.